The Brazilian government has called the highway “sustainable,” but critics have pointed to the irony of clearing rainforests for a climate summit.
A four-lane highway is under construction through tens of thousands of acres of the Amazon rainforest ahead of the COP30 climate summit in Belém, Brazil. The road is intended to ease traffic for the more than 50,000 people expected to attend the conference in November.
The Brazilian government has called the highway “sustainable,” but critics have pointed to the irony of clearing rainforests for a climate summit. Alongside the newly built road, logs are seen being piled up from the trees cut down to make way for construction.
“Everything was destroyed,” local resident Claudio Verequete explained, according to the BBC. “Our harvest has already been cut down. We no longer have that income to support our family.”
Verequete, who made a living harvesting açaí berries from trees that have now been cleared, said he has not received compensation from the government and fears further deforestation in the future.
“Our fear is that one day someone will come here and say: ‘Here’s some money. We need this area to build a gas station, or to build a warehouse.’ And then we’ll have to leave,” he said. “We were born and raised here in the community. Where are we going to go?”
He also noted that his community will not have access to the road due to walls on either side.
“For us who live on the side of the highway, there will be no benefits. There will be benefits for the trucks that will pass through. If someone gets sick, and needs to go to the center of Belém, we won’t be able to use it.”
Scientists have raised concerns about the highway’s impact on the rainforest ecosystem, warning that it disrupts wildlife movement. Professor Silvia Sardinha, a wildlife veterinarian and researcher at a university animal hospital near the new road, said the effects of deforestation are immediate.
“We are going to lose an area to release these animals back into the wild, the natural environment of these species,” she said. “Land animals will no longer be able to cross to the other side too, reducing the areas where they can live and breed.”
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has promoted COP30 as an opportunity to highlight efforts to protect the Amazon. However, Sardinha suggested that while the summit will feature conversations “at a very high level, among business people and government officials,” locals living in the Amazon are “not being heard.”
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